NVIDIA has announced that there PhysX and NVIDIA® APEX software development kits will be a major part of the upcoming Playstation 4 gaming system. The inclusion of this technology will allow upcoming games to have a greater real-world enviornment with better smoak and destruction features according to the developer.
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You see Sony wanted the CPU/GPU to be on one chip. Thats a huge cost saving.
Intel- isnt in the position to do that - since their CPUs are darn good, but GPUs suck.
Nvidia- Well Nvidia doesnt have CPUs so they are out of the picture
AMD- and then there is AMD, Although AMD CPUs might be average to poor their GPUs are right up there with Nvidia. Hence AMD was the most cost effective choice for a CPU / GPU setup on a single chip.
Attractive for console manufacturers looking to cut costs where they can and simplify their supply chain.
The PS4 should have plenty of power to be a substantial upgrade over the PS3. The other components generally don't stand out the way the RAM does, but the key aspect of the architecture is that it will be easier and more flexible for developers and reasonably economical with the CPU/GPU configuration.
If thats the case i would hope they implement the same changes to physX on pc's because my AMD card suffers horribly running physX. Not because my graphics card sucks but because nvidia optimized physX to run best on their cards and horribly optimized it for the CPU on purpose so that it runs crappy on AMD cards.
AMD has CPU tech and GPU tech.
NVIDIA has yet to showcase its CPU tech. Which likely wouldn't be far off from Jaguar cores in its first edition roll out.
Benefits of heterogeneous computing, low TDP, probably size of silicon, manufacturing process (28nm) and hence low cost in a quite interesting performance envelope.
CPU/GPU/memory integration is crucial for a console. Otherwise you will have to go to one cpu manufacturer, a gpu vendor and hope these two guys will speak the same language with you being in the middle. We saw how that worked out with IBM and NVidia, didn't we?
NVidia only has ARM cores, and those are - despite all promises - not the fastest around.
Intel has no compute IP which could compete with either AMD nor NVidea, ARM or SGX or anybody else is not on the level, either.
IBM is just IBM. They rather build servers.
But I agree that for a game console AMD made the most sense, although I wonder how exactly Sony managed to get past the terms of Intel's x86 licensing agreement. It sets strict rules on who exactly can manufacture an x86 CPU, and it also means that Sony likely does not own the design of the PS4 APU, so manufacturing it on their own with 3rd party contractors to cut costs will be more difficult a few years down the road.
Also Haswell's IGP supports DirectX 11.1, OpenCL 1.2, and OpenGL 4.0, and should offer reasonably good compute performance. On top of that some versions of Haswell are expected to come with 128MB of eDRAM which could be quite useful. Using Intel in a console however is not feasible because the "Intel tax" would be detrimental to low-cost console manufacturing, and Intel would not allow anyone else to manufacture their own CPUs/APUs.
eDRAM is not what you'd want to have for HSA. You'd need bandwidth in both directions. And nobody else has anything comparable ATM. eDRAM with a fast RAM interface would not increase performance by much (if at all) but simply add to the cost. And you still couldn't do heterogeneous computing without bottle necks. eDRAM is just a texture cache, not much more.
Well, you can run OpenCL on a CPU compute target. Doesn't say much about performance, though. And OpenCL benefits extremely from the high bandwidth of a shared CPU/GPU architecture (@ 176GB/s) because it needs both, scalar (CPU) and vector (GPU) instructions.
OpenGL 4.0 does not support compute in the graphics pipeline (4.3 does), and most likely Sony will use their own extended libGCM 2.0 with this thing (and probably a new version of PSGL).
Intels IGPs are not even close to the integration level of APUs. I am curios to see how Jaguar performs, though. Especially because it is bundled with GDDR5 which currently is hard to tell what that actually means for CPU benchmarks.
And, despite all people saying this is a PC, HSA is actually much closer to what devs are used to on the PS3 - using PPU, SPU and shader cores to perform co-operative operations - than simply throwing some draw calls down the render pipeline; which will happen with all straight PC ports coming to the PS4. HSA is where the PS4 will shine and where it has a quite big advantage for a couple of years to come. I think devs used to the CELL will have no problems adapting; while strictly PC developers will need to adjust again.
Haswell is an APU, and the eDRAM can be used by both the CPU and GPU component of Haswell and is included because sharing DDR3 between the CPU and GPU in dual-channel mode does not provide enough bandwidth for gaming, which is an issue with AMD's current-gen APUs. Obviously this won't be an issue on the PS4, but Haswell isn't competing with the PS4's custom APU. You wouldn't be running OpenCL on the CPU, but the GPU which is at least 2x as fast as the Intel HD 4000. Haswell follows many of the design cues of HSA.
Ivy Bridge was already more integrated than anything AMD has released thus far as the GPU can read and write to the L3 cache. Now obviously compared to the APU in the PS4, Haswell's GPU will still seem fairly limited, but compared to AMD's desktop/laptop 2013 APU roadmap, it will be pretty competitive.
And of course Nvidia is willing to allow the use of these programs. If the royalty pay out is right why not?
AMD gives CPU + GPU bundle deals to Sony and MS, whereas Nvidia has no x86 CPU's to bundle. More convenient to go with AMD, unfortunately
Plus AMD is known for a better value for money.
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@isarai
"But it'll easily be able to do all of that at 30FPS, which is all you need in most games"
Thats not true. Ask any PC gamer aside RTS games nearly every other genre 60fps is way superior. You wont know it until you have tried it.
30fps feels sluggish in comparison.
But then again I rarely play fps, which where they are supposed to make a difference. I'm playing MSG:Rising at the moment and I genuinely think it makes games look tacky. I will probs get a million thumbs down but I'd much prefer a consistent 30fps, but thats just me...
Edit: it could be something other then the framerate which creates this sensation but I find it the same in call of duty, but It doesn't bother me in that game
"I think 60fps looks weird :/"
Stopped reading.
Btw, English is not my first language! Wtf?! Do you guys have a thing called education in USA?
they must feel pretty embarrassed right now
Chu chuuu "All a board the hype train, Next stop... E3"
http://n4g.com/news/1181350...
BUT How is Nvidia Physx gonna be on an AMD GPU?
I guess it will be CPU Physx which in turn will be offloaded to the GPU because it's a APU!
This has become very Interesting!!!